Midsummer Literary Elements

The poems are told from the perspective of a first-person subjective point of view.

“Night in the Gardens of Port of Spain” has eight stanzas written in an iambic pentameter form.

In “Night in the Gardens of Port of Spain”, the black person looking at the sky is compared with the night. This comparison is used in this context to show just how hard life could be for a black person and how many slaves had no hope for the future.

We find an alliteration in the poem “Sea Grapes” in the lines “that chain-link fence dividing the absent roars/ of the beach from the empty ball park, its holes”

An ironic idea is presented in the poem “Night in the Gardens of Port of Spain” where the narrator describes the white masters as dependent on the work done by the slaves. Despite not knowing how to take care of themselves, the characters still refuse to see the black population as their equals, an ironic idea considering how the black population was much more skilled and capable of taking care of themselves without any outside help.

The poem “A Far Cry from Africa” is a political poem.

The action in the poem “Midsummer” takes place on a beach in an unnamed country in Africa.

The tone used in the poem “The Sea is History” is a demanding and outraged one.

In most of the analyzed poems the protagonists are the black people and the antagonists are the white people trying to keep the black population under their control.

The major conflict in the poem “A Far Cry from Africa” is an internal one and is the result of the narrator’s desire to see the state of Kenya independent and his outrage upon hearing the way in which the Kenyan powers killed countless civilians.

The poem “Night in the Gardens of Port of Spain” reaches its climax when the sun rises.

In the beginning of the poem “Midsummer”, the narrator describes a grade fence in the middle of the United States of American. This fence is used to foreshadow the oppression the black population had to suffer at the hands of the white American population.

In the beginning of the poem “A Far Cry from Africa”, the narrator alludes the idea that maybe it would be better for the African countries to rule themselves since they will then have the power to decide what is wrong and right for them. The narrator also thinks that in this way, the number of killed Africans will reduce and peace will rule over the African countries. This is however an understatement as the narrator later describes the atrocities performed by the African governments who did everything they could to ensure they maintained their power over the normal people.

In “The Sea is History” the narrator alludes the idea that white people used everything they can, including religion, to support their claims that making someone a slave was nothing wrong but, on the contrary, something they were supposed to do and for the greater good of the person enslaved.

The term “history” in “The Sea is History” is used as a general term to make reference to the pain suffered by the black people who were enslaved.

We have a personification in the poem “Sea Grapes” in the line “the light warms up the sides”.

We have a hyperbole in the poem “Midsummer” in the line ““stitching stars in the sand”.

We have onomatopoeia in the line “I heard a distant cry” in the poem “A Far Cry from Africa”.